Most discreet intelligence agency

The diplomatic foundation that was the genesis of Echelon (see article by Philippe Rivière) is the Ukusa agreement. This still secret agreement goes back to 1947 and has its roots in the communications intelligence alliance formed in the early days of the second world war and ratified on 17 May 1943 by the United Kingdom and the United States. Foremost among those agencies is the US National Security Agency (NSA) which is designated as the First Party to the Treaty. The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) signed the Ukusa agreement on behalf of the Commonwealth, bringing Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) into the arrangement (1).

While these countries are bound by additional direct agreements with the US and each other, they are considered the Second Parties to the (Ukusa) Treaty. Third Party members include Germany, Japan, Norway, South Korea and Turkey. There are sources that indicate China may be included in this group on a limited basis as well.(2)

The prime mover in the Ukusa arrangement is undeniably the National Security Agency (NSA) which issues the majority of funds for joint projects and facilities as well as the direction for intelligence gathering operations. The participating agencies frequently exchange personnel, divide up intelligence collection tasks and establish common guidelines for classifying and protecting shared information. However, the NSA utilises its role as the largest spy agency in the world to have its international intelligence partners do its bidding.

President Harry Truman established the NSA in 1952 with a presidential directive that remains classified to this day, and the US government did not acknowledge the existence of the NSA until 1957. Its original mission was to conduct the signal intelligence (Sigint) and communications security (Comsec) for the US. To this, (...)

(1) The author has handed over the conclusions of his research to the US Congress. “Echelon: America’s Secret Global Surveillance Network”, The Privacy Papers, no 4, November 1998, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, Washington DC. - http://www.freecongress.org/ctp/echelon.html
(2) Duncan Campbell, “They’ve got it taped”, New Statesman, London, 12 August 1988.
(3) “About NSA” is the agency’s presentation on its Internet site (http://www.nsa.gov./about/). This soothing document reassures us that the NSA is very interested in the environment, has established a large recycling programme and is one of the major blood donors in the region.
(4) Idem.
(5) James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization, Penguin Books, New York, 1983.
(6) External Collection Program, US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence and the Rights of Americans, 23 April 1976.
(7) See James Bamford, op cit.